Indian Time - A Voice from the Eastern Door

Facebook, Akwesasne’s favorite time thief, has had its share of controversaries over issues surrounding fake news, disinformation, privacy breaches, and taxes. Remember the WhatsApp sharing of personal data, Facebook’s proposed Libra cryptocurrency, a doctored video of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that made it appear like she was slurring her words (Facebook didn’t take it down) or if it should ban prominent conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (Facebook did remove him)? Back in 2018 the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica data scandal was a huge outrage where Facebook again harvested the personal date of millions of people’s Facebook profiles without their consent and used it for political advertising purposes. Which bring memories of the 2016 Russian interference in United States presidential election.

Fast forward to 2020 and oil and gas companies, and groups linked to oil companies, have spent big money on Facebook ads disparaging the rail blockades, denouncing the First Nations-led protests that have targeted rail transport in Canada in the past month, spending as much as an estimated $110,000 since January on Facebook advertising to promote the Coastal GasLink natural gas pipeline or to outright oppose the rail blockades as illegal.

According to a CBC News analysis, these ads were shown to Facebook users about 20 million times.

The group ‘Canada Action’ was one of the biggest spenders dishing out an estimated $21,000 on Facebook ads. These Facebook ads negatively portrayed the blockades by Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and their supporters. According to data obtained from the Facebook political ad library, another group called Proud to Be Canadian spent an estimated $4400 on ads portraying themselves as grassroots campaigns; their origins are closely tied to energy companies and conservative-leaning political groups.

In contrast to the negative ads being viewed over 20 million times, ads in support of the protests which were mostly purchased by small activist groups were viewed about 350,000 times by Facebook users. These groups collectively spent about $3,000 on the ads.

Conservative leadership candidate Erin O’Toole was another big buyer of ads opposing the blockades. His campaign ran 30 ads, in English and French at an estimated cost of $14,000. Other leadership candidates, including Peter MacKay, Rick Peterson and Marilyn Gladu, also ran ads pushing their opposition to the protests.

According to CBC, by far, the most prolific online advertiser on the pipeline project is Coastal GasLink itself. They have run 80 ads since the start of the year, almost a quarter of all the ads in the data obtained by CBC. The ads, which cost roughly $50,000 allude to Indigenous support for the pipeline.